Oceanic Pressure
by Nanotika
Summary: An anchor tied across his chest brings him beneath the ocean's wrath. Maybe the weight of fate will carry him home, instead of dragging him away from it. Nautilus x Rapture
1. Chapter 1

The armored form tumbled through the curtain of water, the depths of which the light failed to venture into. And as the constant ripples of oxygen bubbles made a curved path away from the sinking mass, the stream offered verification of his constant movement. Surely, as the weight of the ocean bombarded the diving suit with the repetitive squeal of dented metal, his life would soon reach its apex. He felt the veil of emptiness wrap his limbs in a blanket of restrictive seaweed as the faint droplets of condensed gas within his helmet reached the form of water. He became aware of the twisted coil around his chest cavity. The smallest glimmer of his fractured headlight depicted the material as a taut fiber rope. The weight of death, beneath him and constantly pulling him down was the anchor which he crafted in the cruelest of irony, to prevent his ship from becoming a victim of the ocean. He thought of his boat, the thimble of water, the memory distant, like the bubbles which escaped less frequently now.

He shuddered, as all that his skin touched was ice laden by the darkened waters. Rationing that his warmth would be better managed if he curled up in his descent, he did so.

"Death, Is all I see, yet I cannot fathom dying." he drearily gasped in revelation, "It is not a matter of fear, that I Calvin will be crushed and die, but rather, my stream of consciousness having no recollection of mortality or ever being born in the first place." His mouth hung agape with his brown eyes barely open, seeking entertainment in the shifting blackened filter which hugged his perception.

A blue trail of thin smoke streaked across the horizon, as the armored figure fell sideways constantly where time abandoned. Seconds away from the appearance, the sound of a torpedo reaching prime velocity with a hiss reflected off of his ears. The projectile mattered not, as the trail was long gone, a destination unknown in terms of attacker and victim. Calvin felt above the matter, his crumbled and discarded body gave up the futile fight to keep warm, and what he found instead was nirvana as he couldn't tell where his body ended, and the ocean began. He felt like he was a crucial but anonymous part of the shifting tides, and worthy of respect.

He failed to realize that he was at the bottom of the ocean until an adventurous crab assaulted his helmet with a series of fast strikes, doing nothing more than awakening the armored figure, and prompting him to lumber into a standing position.

"Where am I?" Calvin huffed, as he shook the looming feeling of exhaustion from his body. An ever impending threat in the left of his visor marked a lonely brass arrow, largely covering the red notch of his pressure gauge.

"My gauge is broken," Calvin murmured, not so much in concern, but boredom. "But if what's below me truly is the sand, then I must be twenty thousand feet under the ocean's weight." The first tendrils of panic in his subconscious were severed as he quickly diverted his interest to the rope around his chest. The frayed cord was traced by his cumbersome armored hands as he tried again and again to remember the relevance of the heavy weight at the end. His memories would only describe the enigma as being worth its weight in gold due to personal attachment and functionality. Drawing the end closer and closer, his hands approached the handle of cast iron embedded in the coarse granulation of the sand. Striking a pose only King Arthur would match, he unearthed the massive anchor with the sound of cascading sand falling from its riveted surface.

"If I were to let go, what's left of my air tank carry me to the surface, but the altitude expansion would kill me." Calvin rasped as he turned his head upward. Deciding against such a fate, he wrapped the rope through a second coil in his diving suit and heaved the anchor into his open arms in a bridal carry.

The soft thrum of his weighted steel boots against the sand became hypnotic as he traveled in what he could only describe as forward. Lumbering past valleys of sand and over beds of sheetrock, he remarked no difference between the two as his suit provided submerged isolation.

"The question ceases to be, where am I, or even what am I, but it is reduced to something so displeasing, so humbling, Am I?" Calvin murmured to himself with a downturned head.

His vision failed him, not due to the cloud of loose fine grained sand flung up by his forceful movements, but the devouring darkness never kissed by the rays of the sun. Despite his traveling, the feeling in his legs were nonexistent below the chest cavity. Brushing his loose hand over his knee-caps, the diver ensured that the limbs were fully intact and operational; but offered no solace as the texture beneath him was indistinguishable due to the bittersweet lacking of numbness or pain.

The constant sensory deprivation drummed against Calvin's skull, only able to detect the waves of pressure on his ears from the external sources. It was futile to try and touch the sand with his hands, as the armored gloves granted him the curse of detachment.

Muffled in the supreme pressure of the ocean, a faint screech filled the ocean floor, causing Calvin to panic, mistaking the sound for the bending of the helmet's metal. The water shifted suddenly as he flung his head and noticed the pressure remaining at its default value. Cautiously, minding what he could of his step, he ventured in the arbitrary direction of forward.

The trance of his phantom limbs imprinting the ground beneath himself continued to the point of hypnotism. Blunt pressure on his chest plate momentarily halted his path, as his hands prodded the land in front of him, and discovered a reef of tall coral stalks after deliberate tracing. He allowed himself an opportunity to test his strength as he brought back his loose arm into a haymaker punch, and futilely honed the impact on the side of the thick branch. Nothing more than the scratching of the stalk was recorded. But finding no reason for discouragement, Calvin decided to flatten his hand into a thin extension of his fingers, allowing his arm to glide along the water picking up speed and ensuring the impact site was small and concentrated. He was rewarded by the shattering of the stalk, followed by the collapse of the thick trunk. He reaped a thin path among the coral, unscaved by priorities such as time and importance. The armored hand ventured out and traced the contours of the manufactured hallway, giving him a sense of place and belonging. The highest degree of solace filled his fragile heart by the progress he achieved, retracing again and again the coarse texture.

The returning screech sirened throughout the ocean once more, the note, a crescendo of deafening spikes slowly fading into the dark. The diver cared not for the noise, seeing the repetitive occurrence as common, and futile to question. He lifted the anchor into the position of a wood-cutting axe, a testament to his recent practice, and cleaved the row of stalks in front of himself with one fluid motion. He heard a footstep, the slightest crunch of granulated coral, not of his own; vastly amplified by the absolute quiet around him. He dropped his anchor, using the stem to quickly rotate his body and head to the left, but grew confused as the red of his pressure gauge detached from the full circle of soft red glow now in front of him.

He stared at the pulsing red light, as his eyes screamed under strain of neglect. He willed his vision to clear the blur, and show him the nature of the mystery before him, even refusing to blink by sheer willpower alone. He prayed that the light would stay long enough for him to examine it, but to his dismay, the form swiftly gained flight, as the slender figure leaped upward and darted through the untouched coral reef, gaining distance by the second. He willed himself to yell after the receding figure, but grimaced as no sound escaped his throat.

Calvin retracted his anchor from its resting place, taking the weight over his shoulder and sprinted in the direction the former light; Caring not that his armor clashed against coral at full speed, causing damage to both involved.

"The light, reminding me so fondly of the surface, don't disappear, don't allow yourself, a cruel illusion to disappear in order to spite me." Calvin cried out in anguish. The light reminded him of his previous life, he felt the phantom pain of the sun's rays upon his face, quickening his pulse. The light was far too fast, scintillating downwards, as if flying to the center of the earth.

Calvin continued his hulking sprint onward, heartbroken as the memories once again depreciated into the darkness within his own mind. He found his next step lacking purchase, as the feeling of free water once again drug him further down into the sensation of endless descent into an oceanic trench.

He could only watch as the anchor once again betrayed his wishes. He could either follow the weight downward, until his armor crushed under absurd pressure, or he could wretch himself free and become at the mercy to the low pressure near the surface, boiling his blood in agony before suffocating. His futile vision was blurred once more by tears, Calvin clenched his jaw-line in despair as the first cracks in his armor grew formidable. The light, the glowing light he entrusted; the light he relied upon for essential human contact, was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

She lurked the halls of the translucent glass city with purpose, the taut leather buckles which were formed perfectly to her shape flexed under her constant stride. The steel rods connected to her bones rest just above the skin of her clothing in an exoskeleton. Light flooded the halls and imbued her exterior rib cage with a sheen of polished metal. Each vertebrae of her spinal cord was reinforced with a thin plate of steel which overlapped the formers, gracefully bobbing and flexing as her footsteps took her down the hallway.

A soft red circle of light reflected dolefully off of the hallway's fortified glass walls. Encouraging her to stop and observe her crestfallen reflection. The lights of a nearby train sped through the outside waters, granting a glimmering light which revealed her complete reflection, Tall and thin, in unarmored sections she wore a loose cotton shirt, the original color indistinguishable under the multitude of stains. Restricted by metallic armor, leather fortification, and a full helmet of round steel with the centerpiece: a red window; She tenderly reached up, and placed a hand on the empty wire cage welded to her back, decorated in gray ribbons.

She raised her head, arching her back and emitting a soft screech into the air around her. The only octave her voice could reach, against her efforts sounded threatening and intimidating; Regardless of being a simple call to any children in the vicinity. She rotated her torso, allowing her ears unrestricted access to any possible responses. After minutes of hopeful waiting, she sunk off into the damaged city once again.

* * *

As Calvin descended into the trench he perceived as his grave, he figured his eyes to be deceiving him before death. Instead of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as under common belief, he blinked the obscuring tears from his eyes and focused intently on the light which he fell towards. A city constructed under the sea is what he extended his right arm towards, in a futile attempt to grab the allusive vapor of hope. Heavily reinforced steel welded the skyscraper class buildings to the bedrock, as advertising signs were welded to the third story windows of every plaza in similar regard to Tokyo. Roads on the ground floor were encased by reinforced glass tunnels, as he saw what he believed to be actual humans living out their life there. He fell closer and closer to the utopia as his breath hitched in a multitude of emotions which filled his eyes with tears, but caused his chest to convulse in laughter.

"How cruel fate, how destitute my fortune seems, so close to life instead of survival, how far away my waning armor under this weight cannot swim to see it." Calvin miserably sobbed. "To be shown this hope, beyond a plane of glass, an ant at an unoccupied picnic, starving as he tries futilely to chew through the plastic wrap of the baker's bread."

Calvin blinked in and out of consciousness, as the pressure of opportunity threatened to collapse his skull so close to salvation. He feebly paddled forward, trying to influence the falling of the anchor's weight but quickly became aware of the notching calamity of bending metal which was encompassing him.

"Unless," Panicked Calvin, "Unless I put my cards on the table here and now." Wrenching his oxygen tank from his back, Calvin swung the cumbersome cylinder forward with the end cap pointed away from himself. Recalling the faint memories of safety hazards associated in diving, Calvin's eyes bored holes of focus. With a dead man's grasp he held the tank beneath his left arm, and grappled the end cap with the palm of his dominant hand. His individual fingers created trenches across the circular steel frame as he observed with astonishment the nature of his strength. Like a paper cup, the metal waned and sundered, leaving only the sound of white water rapids and the forward propulsion of a jet engine.

Calvin gained speed, and while the implosive backlash sundered shoulder of his armor, it forced him within touching distance of the glass walls of a city district. And while the lights were on, Calvin wearily acknowledged, nobody was home. The interior to a block which was dubbed Fort Frolic by a baby blue and violet neon sign housed several shop and attraction monuments, all powered by stable electricity, what was missing were the people.

"Why would an immaculate city of glass be empty, I could have sworn I saw people here from afar." Calvin inquisitively tapped against the glass like the empty fish tank it was.

* * *

Melody let her hand slide along the brass guardrail as the shopping district's violet neon lights playfully reflected against her metal rib cage. Each footfall against the worn lacquer of the mahogany floors demonstrated a spring in her step out of enthusiasm and glee. Through the weave of wires and bows on her back, a salvaged teddy bear bounced against the walls of the urn shaped cage, the red satin ribbon on its neck bobbed gracefully in the air-conditioning of the of the open-door shops she passed by. The red glow of her circular helmet window swung left to right, in hopeful glance at the establishment's windows, but her constant movement revealed that she didn't expect to find anything relevant. Palming the sharpened rebar rod she wore through her belt as a sword, she stopped in front of a first-aid kit on the concrete wall.

"The city daughters haven't been here, not recently at least." She mused to herself, as her shoulders dropped the slightest degree in a slump. An erratic clanking from overhead, startling Melody to drop down and grip her rebar rod with the sound of taut leather over the handle. Swinging her eye upward, she stared at the creature who was, to her chagrin, knocking at the walls to her city. The glass between where he stood displaced the concentration of his red glowing eyes, causing the illumination to shift and waver, but she knew that he was staring at her. Against her better judgment, her spine began to quake with fear, causing the reinforced metal plates to chirp and clack as she back traced her step.

"I've never seen a repair man like that model." Melody squirmed, "How could a new model be released when the dive team has been dead for decades?"

She unsheathed her sword and flourished the blade in a sideways slice in a testament of her strength, returning the stare of the frightening boogeyman from the sea beyond. Melody raised her free hand up to the creature before flicking her wrist twice in a symbol that would frighten off a stray cat. She watched as the hulking figure raised his own hand, slowly and deliberately as the ocean which surrounded him, before bringing the backhanded fist gently against the glass, and extending his middle finger.

"Repairmen are glorified machine like drones," Melody gasped in bewildered confusion, "Whatever this free thinking entity is, I cannot lose this fight, as the fate of the defenseless little sisters are in my hands." The rebar rod slid out of her hand, and as it neared the ground, her stance featured a western shootout with both arms hovering over imaginary pistols on her hip. Following the clatter of the wood against steel, a lightning fast draw revealed two middle fingers honed in at the reddened eyes, her grin underneath the helmet curled with victory. As she expected, the repairman like being on the other side of the glass was silent and motionless, out of shock or amazement she couldn't fathom. But her victory was short lived as the creature sunk his feet into the steel ledge he was perched on, and reeled in the rope which was tied across his chest. Four grueling arms lengths later, she was flabbergasted to identify a fully fledged ship anchor weighing down his form.

"What is he planning with an anchor, that bilgerat" she seethed with rage.

Grasping the handle of the deadweight between the index and middle finger of his right hand, the creature heaved the anchor upwards and held the display of his new middle finger being twice the size he was.

"That little shit!" Melody howled, regardless of the sound only coming out as a piercing screech of rage. Off Balance by the outburst, the creature's anchor tilted backward, and with futile circular motions of his outstretched hands to regain his footing, he found himself drug beneath the window pane and collapsing in the heap of sand and bones two stories below.


	2. Chapter 2

Melody's childish hand pressed upon the fish tank so many years in the past. The bare fingertips hummed in resonance with the purring water filter as the lone fish inside meandered along the crag surface of the porcelain castle within. The sounds of suitcases locking in the background did little to distract her from the careful observation of the small and swift red beta. The tail fin of which, twice its length gracefully glided through the resisting waters, seemingly untethered from the reality engrossing it. The agile fish curved past a needle hole in the castle wall, as if ghosting through air instead of the water. Her mesmerized perception lost focus as the tapping of dress shoes against the stone floor of their midsized apartment entryway signaled the time for her departure. Melody knelt by the fish tank in order to retrieve her red slippers from the storage shelf below, locking eyes with the fish, she remarked how time seemed to slow, leading them to both remain still.

"Can Mr. Bubbles come with us, swimming outside of our house?" Melody voiced remorsefully to her father perched within the doorframe.

"No, he cannot survive," he whispered gravely, "but if you come along and help us with our research, we could create fish that will. You're an incredibly bright girl, Melody."

Perturbed by the concentration of her saddening emotions, Melody sniffled and bit her lip in order to halt the process of tears from flowing.

"He is just a fish," Melody confided, more to convince herself than to justify the truth, "What do I care if he is left alone and dies here without knowing the reason, ignorant to the circumstances which declared his life secondary to the progression of ours."

She spat as the pungent petrichor stained her nose with the sorrowful promise of another season of rain, for the fifth time that day her thoughts ran rampant. Almost detached from the body in which he owned, she gripped the camera strap around her neck, mechanically turned to the visage of her father and mother standing patiently by the door. He wearing gray khaki pants, leather dress shoes and a red sweater vest. She wearing a white summer dress, white ballroom slippers and a blue scarf held in place by an anchor brooch pin. The shuddering camera turned the whole apartment white with an apprehensive flash before the winding gears churned out a developing sheet of paper in a monochrome brown filter. Tenderly handling the borders of the photograph, she balanced the square against the fishbowl, as a keepsake for the lonely fish to remember them by.

* * *

Calvin violently convulsed under the multitude of sand which weighed down on his appendages. Panicked by the unresponsiveness of his body, he thrashed with all of his muscles in an attempt to free himself, but instead came to appreciate the restriction of the glimmering sand. Like a warm blanket which inhibits free motion, he felt safe and secure, as if watching the nighttime sky from beneath a picnic tarp in the chilling wind of October.

"Where are the stars?" Calvin strenuously questioned the blackened veil of the ocean above his resting place. "As I peer into the darkness, lost and forgotten by those I've associated with home, I cannot hear them calling."

Calvin was subtly surprised that his vision remained free from tears, and as he questioned the nature of his emotional wellbeing, he couldn't quite place a finger on something being absent.

"We are all left to die, in the same manner as we are raised to live," Calvin's dreary voice boomed and rattled the firmly packed sand. His inflection adopted an astral undertone as each word poured from his mouth like molasses over cubes of ice. "All will drown, whether it be from their own devices in life, or the ill-intention of those whom they once honored with friendship." As he lay with his hands stretched out, he felt hundreds of tingling arms wrapped around his chest and feebly attempting to drag him from the metal shell he wore like skin.

"As I peer into the darkness, I do not fear the ocean's weight, for the tide which connives to spite me shares the same virtue I do: to never ebb." Shouting against the strain, Calvin felt a pressure build up in the cavity of his chest. His arms sundered the coarse grain with the sound of an uprooted tree while his legs cleaved through their restraints in two plumes of murky sand.

"Forward, forward," Calvin's unnatural voice repeated, "I will not rest, for I am the depths."

Grasping the earth in his downturned gauntlet, Calvin rotated his body and fought for slack from the anchor which was seven feet below.

"Beware, the depths." Calvin menacingly warned the sand below, as he tugged the anchor free from its confines with each handful of rope displacing even more of the seafloor.

Calvin stood on the loose sand with the anchor lazily perched on his right shoulder, the red glow from his eyes bathed his perception with a faint ruby filter. The sand at his feet ominously shied away from his footsteps, as he approached a metallic wall of the mysterious city. Thump, thump, thump, Calvin dented the steel of the wall in an attempt at knocking. Growing bored with the practice, he looked to follow the barrier's length across the ocean floor, what he perceived to be half a mile in size. Turning his head to the right in order to start his journey, a dolefully red circle stared at him from the third story in a perpendicular building complex near the end of his destination. Straining his eyes, he remarked that the figure was casually motioning to something with her hands. Her index finger seemed to be pointing right through his chest, and with his perplexed turn of body, he understood that to his left, a few yards away was a pressure lock door hatch. Returning his gaze to the right, he peered for the red circle from the third story balcony for confirmation, only to discover that it had vanished entirely. Slowly approaching the hatch, Calvin's grip tightened around the circle valve as he rotated the wheel and heaved open the heavily reinforced door. Dragging his anchor nonchalantly through the doorframe, Calvin pulled on the hatch before locking it with another twist of the circular wheel. A pressurizing hiss sounded off in the room as the water evacuated past the fishnet flooring, and for the first time since Calvin could remember, the weight of movement was met without any resistance.

"I cannot find pleasure in the air," Calvin sighed listlessly, "The water seems far too real to me."

Making his way across the fishnet floor tiles, Calvin grew puzzled as his previous method of walking was unsuitable for this new environment. Starting off his stride by simply tilting his anchor forward and falling with the weight, Calvin caught himself by bringing the secondary foot upward. Subsequently, he rationed that he looked like a tiptoeing grave robber from a cartoon, but he felt no reason to change what immediately worked. With a firm hand on the entrance of the city, Calvin swung open the gate, and followed the bobbing weight of his overturned anchor to step foot inside the abandoned plaza.


	3. Chapter 3

Clenching his jaw, Calvin's mountainous gaze was set upon the dust ridden staircase leading up to the elevated first floor. The door in which he approached was propped open by a water warped apple crate, but the dust which was ingrained among the floor surface halted prior to the doorframe. He stumbled apprehensively as his boots approached the division between his home and the unchartered territory.

"Something dreadful is concentrated in this city," Calvin accused, "Thousands of disappointed voices crushed under the piercing scowl of one man." Throwing the weight of his shoulder against the steel entrance, he smiled as the reverberated metal and almost rattled the door off its hinges. Dragging the anchor across the ground, he inspected the desolate room in which he entered. Whatever couldn't be stabilized by marble columns of Greek architecture, were instead fortified with brass and steel accents and heavily reinforced glass. The ruby sheen of Calvin's eyes lofted over the market stand on a far off wall. Unlike the vendor carts he was accustom to, these shops were built into the very foundation of the building itself. The chest height bar counter was constructed with spotted granite which had been chipped away by the broken bottles which lined the shelves and the dried up fluid which was expelled from them. Finding nothing valuable amongst the wreckage, Calvin's eyes shifted to the plaza entrance as he traced the contours of what he perceived to be bullet holes and blunt weapon strikes against the marble support beams.

"Violence." Calvin seethed through his steel armor. Taking a step back for a better perspective of the room, he let his mind unravel the mystery of the abandoned civilization.

"Flattened bullets lay in a line approaching the plaza entrance, the closer they are to the column the more damage the fragmentation they exhibit." Calvin drearily theorized, "Whatever was firing these bullets was standing with his back against the wall, attempting to fend off something that couldn't be penetrated by .50 caliber rounds of a machine gun." Approaching the column himself, he shifted his weight against the stone, and arched his back in an attempt to see what the shooter had experienced.

"I am terrified," Calvin puzzled, "Something that I saw on the other side of the counter, near the circular ventilation shaft petrified me to this one spot in the room. I am opening fire with all the ammunition I have at my disposal now, the nine millimeter pistol is useless against this threat, so I put it away, while fumbling with my machine gun and accidently dropping three whole shell casings before opening fire again. The terrifying thing is approaching me now, previously, I was able to be able to shoot at least ten bullets per foot, but now it is moving so fast that only three per foot actually hit the target."

Bracing his weight on the balls of his feet, Calvin raises his hands in an alert stance, "The creature is now several yards away from me, the sound of gunfire is being drowned out by the demolishment of the shells in which I am firing. The sound of metal on metal clings against each other as I am running out of options. I duck out of the way, to the right- my dominant foot which I am assured will carry me to safety faster." Leaping swiftly, Calvin's head swung backward to keep an eye on the imagined creature.

"The creature's strike was concentrated on the center of the marble column, before shearing the stone to the left, and creating slight rivets on the uneven surface of the cylinder." Calvin declared, "The strength behind the blow was a display of brute force, but also coming to a point, as if he was using a mobile drilling rig attached to a haymaker punch."

Tracing the floor with his eyes, he remarked that no other bullet casings were between himself and the column, "I now understand that my machine gun is useless, I let it fall limply to my side as the satchel strap swings with momentum around my left shoulder." Turning away from the column and adopting the stance of a sprinter with flattened palms, Calvin takes one more look around. "My time is limited, as the speed the creature has demonstrated in the damage of the column could easily chase me down unless I can think of something to even the odds." Slowly moving forward, ruby illumination envelops a multitude of scrap metal and empty cardboard boxes to his left, before swinging right and looking into the archway of an adjacent plaza.

"I am desperate to cut off vision between myself and this creature, moving outside of this shelter barren room is my best bet-" Calvin cut himself off, "These bolts lodged in the archway- they reek of burnt out electrical components. Eight bolts in total are placed at neck line level to myself, the electronics in the end caps are designed to deliver a fatal shock through a metallic line which bridges the two halves of the archway. " Eyes growing wide, Calvin stammers, "I placed these traps beforehand in an attempt to bait the creature towards this place in the plaza, before ducking through myself and taunting the creature from the other side. Ashes are visible in the entryway which mean that the ropes ignited from sheer electrical overload, the trap successfully delivered the shock to something."

Calvin's neck tingled with the looming threat of danger, he sensed two yellow eyes boring holes though the back of his helmet as he contemplated continuing on with the investigation.

"I moved though the net in which I constructed to kill the creature, and turned around to see." Calvin's breath hitched in anticipation as he swung around quickly and scanned the room in which he just ventured out of. Two small bare feet smeared the ashes of the entryway in front of him, as a small girl in a dirty blue dress stared at him questioningly with radioactive yellow eyes. Calvin remained silent as the shock of the new human face weighed down on his mind. The small girl pursed her hands and tilted her head in an attempt to see Calvin in a new light, but still remained confused.

"Daddy, you weren't here for a week, why do you look different?" The small child cried out.

Calvin's eyes shifted to the right of his peripheral vision, as much as he was able without moving his head in an indication. On his side of the doorframe, a hulking armored figure lay against the wall as its metal headpiece hung limp, as he hypothesized, the electrical trap immolated the steel throat piece of the formidable titan, leading to its inevitable death. Mind racing at her question, Calvin turned his eyes back to the defenseless child and clenched his jaw in understanding of the situation. Her father, as she called him, had been dead for weeks, and she had been alone in this abandoned city.

"I went exploring, and found an anchor on the ocean floor." Calvin slowly stated.

"Daddy, you really could talk all along!" the child's mouth hung agape, as her eyes opened in fascination, "Lead the way."


	4. Chapter 4

Trailing slightly behind the mysterious girl, Calvin's eyes illuminated the path in which they took down the corridor. He desired to ask the question of her name, or even the purpose in which she served in this city, but was afraid of the considerable suspicion that would arise in doing so. As he figured, the longer he could keep the act of being her father, the more he could delay her discovery of the corpse which faded into the backdrop behind them.

"What would her father act like in this situation?" Calvin groaned under his breath, "Her clothing is riddled with stab and slash marks, overlapping the multitude of burned fabric and blood stains; but the skin of her bare feet are without bruises nor calluses."

With a swish of her dirty brown ponytail, he found that her glowing yellow eyes were tracing his figure while they continued walking.

"Daddy, where did you leave your drill?" she piped nervously, "It always helped keep the bad men away from me."

Glancing thoughtfully at the spotted paint of the ceiling, Calvin's eyebrows within his helmet furrowed.

"Drills are noise polluting vexations that belong on the dirt surface." he softly claimed, as he continued his amble, "An anchor on the other hand, is the incarnation of the water, like the ocean's weight it can slow down and inhibit whomever's will is weaker than the beholder. In the arms of a captain, it can tame the movement of the sea and prevent his boat from fleeing. In the arms of a father, it can break the bones of whomever connives to hurt his kin."

The patter of her footsteps fell less frequently as her eyes peered into his own, out of reverence of his knowledge. Intoxicated by the wisdom which she gathered from the question, the butterflies in her stomach dissolved, bringing instead a confidence which bolstered her heart and tilted her chin high as she walked. Calvin observed as the meek girl in which he first met was replaced by a confident child who walked with a prideful step. Regardless of the chillingly dark deviations from their main hallway, she fearlessly perused her lit path. Nearing a mahogany double door near the end of the plaza, she swung her head back once more, and with a smile, beckoned her father to scout the area ahead first.

"She is not ignorant to pain and danger," Calvin scrutinized as he grabbed the brass lever, "The evidence on her clothing shows that she has been through more than enough pain for a child twice her age. I have to assume whatever was capable and willing to torment her even while under the care of her former father is still out there. Let her father watch from his throne in the prideful warrior kingdom, and bolster my resolve. Let him look down and see that his daughter is still safe and drink merrily this day." Bracing the firm metal of his shoulder against the door, he paused and let the silence permeate the hallway as the child listened as well. With no signs of life on the other side, Calvin opened the door to a meager sliver as the red glow from his eyes curled over the wooden edges ominously. It was then he realized that a clatter arose from the other side, the scattering of glass bottles on a linoleum floor. He halted, as he swung his head toward his daughter, only to realize that her hand apprehensively grasped the fabric of her blouse in fear. Calvin's eyes etched into malice, as the once soft glow hardened and became security spotlights in a federal prison. He felt his feet tingle with the supply of blood as his back arched in a feral stance. With one hand grasped around the brass lever, his dominant gauntlet constricted the handle of his anchor.

"Is that what she is taught here," Calvin voiced boisterously, "To live in fear that people are going to burn and slash away at her?" With a low roar, Calvin draped the beak of his anchor against the mahogany surface, the splinters of the sundered door darted outwards as the reinforced screws popped out of the doorframe with a squeal. The door itself began to fall down, as what now stepped over the remains, was a creature wielding the anchor in one hand as if a short sword, while swinging his tightened fist back and forth as he moved. Four splotched masquerade masks turned up from their salvage to growl at Calvin. Two white rabbit masks hunkered down and brandished segments of steel pipe. Underneath the porcelain, he saw the deformity that the females exhibited over their dirty cocktail dresses. Tumors lined their bodies, as their legs were asymmetrical by the unsuccessful setting of previous broken bones. A hawk mask belonged to a pinstripe vest wearing man who was perched upon one of the many wooden benches around the large park, giving a calculating stare at the threat which just entered his domain. A man with a butterfly mask reached back into the folds of his green vest and the outer lining of his belt, as he apprehensively looked to the hawk for an order.

"Can we assist you, Big Daddy." The hawk inquired politely, "If I had to deduct by your anger alone, your little sister was probably ripped from your clutches. I can assure you that we had no part to play in it."

The beak of the hawk tilted sideways as the eyebrows from underneath furrowed slightly, "I'm quite sure that she is behind you, so I ask, what would you be so upset over?"

"Girl," Calvin's astral voice spoke from outside of his suit, "Are these the ones who have hurt you in the past?"

"Did he-" The Butterfly blurted out, "He just spoke." The rabbits finished in unison, blood draining from their faces.

Standing full attention as he spread his leather dress shoes out across the floor and edged his way into a standing position, the Hawk stared at the anchor which bobbed as Calvin spoke.

"No, Daddy." She chagrinned behind his left leg, "I have never seen these people before. Don't start a fight with them, we just need to avoid unwanted attention while I find the angels."

Calvin's stare hung on the butterfly who was holding the butt of a snub-nosed pistol in the back of his belt. Sweat flowed profusely from the bottom of the mask, and with each second, his hand shook in panic until he couldn't prevent the shivering.

"Stop looking at me." The butterfly begged the world around him. The red eyes of Calvin possessed no irises or center of attention. They existed unnaturally and brought with their visage an existence so devoid of death that life seemed to be the irregularity in the first place.

"James, stand down!" the Hawk barked suddenly, with an overzealous wave of his hand. James's eyes flickered in his direction, but unlike his previous memories of his leader, he was terror-stricken to realize that he too was drenched in a cold sweat over their new guest.

"Innocent, Innocent." Calvin voiced quietly as his eyes lightened the burden of their scrutiny. "We shall find the angels in which you have described, little one." Apprehensively stepping out from the safety of her protector's leg, she grasped Calvin's index finger, and led him swiftly away before more conflicts could arise.

The sound of automatic sprinklers dampened the atmosphere shortly after they had left, leaving the masquerade masked tribe in an uneasy silence.

"There is something about the red eyes," the Butterfly griped, "I'm not scared of dying, but the way they make me feel-"

"They make you feel as if you are already dead." The Hawk concluded wisely. "That wasn't a Big Daddy, I called you away from it— because what you just drew the attention of, was a reanimated skeleton in a metal shell. If you look at how he moves, you would realize that he hasn't taken a single breath the whole time he was in here."


	5. Chapter 5

"I spy with my little eye, something blue." She proclaimed as she towed Calvin through a transparent tunnel towards a central city block.

"Is it the ocean?" Calvin passively took a shot in the dark.

"No Daddy, The ocean only looks blue because of the quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae." She criticized with crossed arms, "I was talking about my dress. Let's play another game."

"I thought the game in which we were playing was to locate the angels." Calvin offered, "Tell me more about what we are looking for."

"Everywhere I look I can see this golden powder levitating in a trail." She confided with a sigh, "It is my job to follow the trails to the concentration of ADAM in the city. ADAM is used to alter DNA structure and is often abused by the people in rapture to cover their imperfections and maintain the glory days. When they eventually die out, it is my job to collect the ADAM from their corpses, and ingest the concentrations so that the parasitic slug within my chest can filter through the resource and keep me alive and sane."

"Parasitic slug." Calvin choked on the information, "Why exactly do you have a parasitic slug inside of your chest?"

"ADAM keeps rapture spinning, the leaders of this city found that the slugs emitted small amounts of ADAM by themselves, but once coupled with a host, they were deemed to be more proficient." She answered as they continued to walk, "The public calls us little sisters. After the civil war broke out over the usage of ADAM, we were often chased down by the junkies themselves and robbed of the ADAM we collected."

Her forward movement slowed to the slightest degree, Calvin realized, as she seemed deep in thought.

"We were not taught in our training," her breath hitched erratically, "That harvesting the ADAM of a little sister kills them. So many of my friends didn't come back from their shift. It's not like mugging someone for their wallet, extracting something so close to the heart- the splicers were not surgeons- how could we survived it?"

"When we first started getting jumped on the streets and killed," her voice faltered, before finding the courage to push through, "They assigned to us these mechanical suits of armor. At first we thought them nothing but machines, but we soon learned that they were real people beneath the surface. Brainwashed into protecting us with father like abandon of their own life if necessary; in similar regard to how we were conditioned to be zombie like harvesters of ADAM who saw every corpse as a beautiful angel."

Calvin peered into her eyes once again as they neared a scene of decay. On the ground lay a woman with a cocktail dress and bandages surrounding her whole head, save for the narrow slits which exposed her lifeless eyes which seemed to be tilted upwards in silent admiration for the clear glass roof, and the vast ocean which beckoned beyond it.

"You see her as an angel?" Calvin inquired softly.

"Not in the way in which you think." His daughter knelt down by the woman before placing her primary hand gently over the covered stomach. "In terms of psychology, my conditioning is in recession. It has been years since I've been to my last appointment, so their hold over my mind faded to such a degree, that I've garnered enough free will to seek education in the many abandoned libraries here."

"Did the other little sisters do the same?" Calvin puzzled as he scanned the bend of the hallway, careful not to let his guard down as she worked.

"The educated ones are usually hidden away, harvesting just enough ADAM to survive for the day without drawing unnecessary attention. They all pray that they will live to see the time of their adolescent and adult life. If we are kept alive, the parasitic creature in our chest bolsters our natural defenses, and makes our bodies accustom to the large doses of ADAM by the time we reach maturity. This allows us to consume twice the resources which drove the splicers to addiction, and achieve a higher aptitude towards the modifications we personally invest in. I once saw-" She sighed in remembrance, "I once saw a big sister who was free from the brainwashing like I am. She was eighteen at the time and donned a spotted two piece bathing suit and her hair up in a gray ribbon behind her head. As I watched her near the pressure lock from the other side of the plaza, I panicked as she caressed the brass wheel with her hands, and simply shut the door behind her. I shouted out for her not to end her life in such a way, but the tremor-full flooding of the lock gates ended my plea too early."

"She died under the ocean's weight, then?" Calvin surmised

"No," the child snickered before adopting a wide grin at the reddened eyes, "She simply started walking out of the gate. A bubble of 90 feet around her displaced the 1000 trillion kilograms of the ocean's weight. The level of telekinetic strength she demonstrated seemed alien to the figure who swayed her hips nonchalantly as she ventured outwards a few feet and knelt to the ground only to construct a meager sandcastle out of spontaneous desire to."

Swirling the reddened contents of her plastic cup, before turning her back to the cadaver and perching her elbow against her chest thoughtfully, she paused and let the silence linger for a second.

"I want to marry her one day." She concluded with a gulp of the foul liquid. "I'm recklessly collecting ADAM in hopes that my strength will attract her attention, but at this rate, I would need three more lifetimes before I could even compare to her."

For the first time in his dreary life, Calvin's smile outweighed the crushing burden of his problems. In front of him was his daughter, the only one in which he cared dearly for. The weight on his shoulders seemed tender with her joy, her happiness granted him a shining beacon of hope. Hope that his own existence had meaning.

"What you need to become stronger is protection while you harvest ADAM from more risky sources." Calvin speculated. "Confide in me your trust, little one. For as long as the ocean bares its fangs down on this sickened asylum, I shall protect you from the clutches of anyone wishing to harm you."

Taken aback by the emotion of his comment, tears were brought to the child's yellow eyes, "I haven't seen her for such a long time though, what if she died, and we die too in a foolish attempt at finding her."

"Hush, child." Calvin soothed, "You can feel it in the pit of your chest that she is still out there. Hang onto that hope, for you are going to make a wonderful bride for her in the future."

"Let's get started then," she bit back more tears from falling, "I will need to buy my first plasmid from the garden district."

"Nothing shall stand in our way then." Calvin eerily stated for fact.


	6. Chapter 6

Calvin focused on the increasing ambient noise as they approached the center city districts. As the linoleum floor beneath their feet was exchanged for planks of lacquered lumber, he saw the room for what it had previously been. Small divisions had outlined the far side of the room, and between them were luxurious booths in which you would find at a diner in the forties. The plush seating arrangements were hugged tight by red leather. The only light in the room was provided by the ironic window seats, which housed a benevolent view on remains of the city, and the neon advertisement boards which imbued the diner with a soft moonlight glow.

"Do you eat, little one?" Calvin voiced lightly to the girl who was comfortably relaxing on a nearby table, her palm holding her head up and examining the city.

"No," she mirthfully snickered as she brought up the thumb of her resting hand, to a pointing position on her chest in explanation.

"The slug, right." Calvin sighed as he too took a seat near the window, the anchor falling off of the back of his shoulder and outlining itself among the floor in hairline fractures. Calvin sensed tension in the air, and as he looked to the face of his daughter, he became offset by her eyes.

"Do you eat, Daddy?" she innocently questioned.

The question held a grave weight to it, Calvin realized almost too late. The question itself was a disguised trap intended to uncover his fabricated identity. If he answered yes, and her father was an animatronic, then she would realize that he was a fake and he would be alone again. If he answered no, a blatant lie, she might see through him anyway.

"I'm not hungry." Calvin softly enunciated. But to his panic, the look of his daughter didn't subside. Instead she seemed concerned by the statement.

"Very well, Daddy." She concluded, as she lifted herself from the table, "We need to make our way to the Gatherers Garden if we are going to find a working plasmid machine."

"The plasmid machine will teach you how to move the ocean?" Calvin deadpanned in disbelief.

"No, the plasmid machine provides instructions to the ADAM you possess in your body. People with a small supply of ADAM can instruct their DNA to do basic tasks such as increasing the density of their skin, or amplifying muscle strength. But the more drastic changes such as setting things on fire and throwing them with telekinesis require a great deal of DNA alteration." She explained as she waited for Calvin to replace the anchor on his shoulder.

"What are you going to get then?" Calvin pondered.

"I don't know what skill I could master that would be impressive to show her," she groaned with confusion.

"Well little one, she can push away the ocean's tides at will, but combating the cold nature of the ocean cannot be done with strength alone. If you were to focus on creating fire and embers, I'm sure that she would see you as a great benefit to her life. Even as one relentlessly determined candela keeping her safe from the cold." Calvin hinted.

* * *

"This horrible city is almost out of my favorite canned peaches." Melody whimpered as she tossed away yet another empty tin can. Replacing her circular helmet before locking the seal, she let her melancholy face brush past the raided pantry one more time.

"This walk-in food storage unit used to be so prosperous, before the splicers figured out the code was 0001" she growled in disgust before heaving the door open and making her way out.

The chirp of a camera alert tone made her drop to the floor out of reflex, only to realize that the camera which acted as sentry to the garden wasn't looking at her. The bright fluorescent bulbs which surrounded the base of the ceiling camera flickered orange and green before turning off and starting the process over again. Trailing the direction the camera was pointing, out of mere curiosity, she choked as she inhaled her saliva. On the other side of the garden, a hulking mass with an anchor looked analytically towards the security camera's fuss, as the little sister near his foot grasped her hair with both hands out of sheer terror, shouting conflicting orders to her protector.

"Hide, daddy!" she wailed in panic, "Why are you setting off the security sensors? Is it your anchor? Where did you find it anyway, drop it and move away quickly! Wait don't drop it the security bots might be called soon!"

Melody cackled beneath her helmet as she watched the scene unfold. The creature holding the anchor on the other side of the garden seemed agitated by the panic unfolding around him. With a broad index finger, he pointed accusingly at the flickering camera.

"Stop it!" He shouted brashly as he glared with anger.

Mildly perplexed, Melody traced the contours of the camera system.

"Huh," she deducted, "The camera's motion sensor keeps getting tripped by him, but once it double checks with its thermal vision, it simply times out and starts the process over again."

"Stop it!" the creature warned the camera once again, as the girl latching on his boot has been reduced to tears.

Just when she believed her smile couldn't get any wider, the camera swiveled its head to the left and right in a temporary glitch, seemingly shaking its head in an indication of no just to spite the titan below it.

"Is that how it is going to be?" The creature eerily voiced as he walked forward, carrying the child with each lumbering footstep.

"My background and training makes me a nightmare to things like you." He threatened as he knelt down with his unhindered leg, grabbing a metallic watering can full of murky water.

"Ch-Ch-Check your privilege!" He bellowed as he splashed the camera with the water in a tidal wave of sludge, "I am the depths!"

Melody fell to her back out of laughter, unable to handle the delightful randomness of the creature. But as the conflict seemed to be resolved with the sputtering of the defiant camera, the smoke which billowed from the vents of the electronic creation sparked against the thermal sensor. Fluorescent bulbs flashing red, she remarked how the whole garden seemed to be flooded with the sound of a klaxon alarm leading the little sister to bury her head into the metal of her protector's leg in fear of her life.

"Girl," the creature chuckled, "I won. The camera isn't looking at me anymore, what is wrong?"


	7. Chapter 7

Calvin raised his anchor in alert as the wooden storage shed of the garden began to chirp and purr. The sound of hornets taking flight overshadowed the klaxon alarm as the automated wooden gates propped open gradually, letting out a string of small helicopter drones with machine gun barrels swiveling beneath them.

"Those are bad, right?" Calvin questioned the inconsolable child on his ankle.

"We are going to die here." she sobbed, refusing to look at the airborne threats.

"Girl," He announced as he sprinted towards the doors in which they previously came, careful not to shake her off. "Need I remind you that I am the depths?"

"The problem is that you are too dense!" She harshly rebutted, as she fought against the jarring motion of his stride.

"Stay by me," he assured as he slammed though the first pair of doors, entering the prolonged hallway. "We need to cut off their vision, otherwise we will be outgunned."

As Calvin flung his head backwards to quickly catch glimpse of the assailants, he realized too late, the mistake of fleeing down this straight hallway in particular. Panic consumed his peripheral vision as the guns from behind sprang forth in small bursts. Thinking quickly, he tore his daughter's arms from their deadened grip on his ankle, before shielding her like a football from the peppering advance.

"You're getting hit, Daddy!" she screamed from beneath his armored form, as the pace in which he ran gradually increased.

"No I'm not," Calvin frigidly dismissed, "I don't feel a thing. The bullets are not getting through the armor."

"I think you're wrong." She stammered beneath tears.

As the overhead lights Calvin dashed through faded behind him, his daughter remarked how her vision flickered from beneath his arms. Her navy blue dress stuck to her shoulders as the dampened cloth adopted the consistency of congealed soup. Patting down the chest of her protector as he ran, she noticed a series of jagged protruding holes which made her hair stand up on end. Passing her fingers continuously over them as if reading brail, she nearly shouted as the next light source came close in the tunnel, revealing meandering streams of pitch black oil leaking down into her clothing.

"You're hurt!" She wailed to her protector.

Calvin brashly ignored the information as he gritted his teeth and darted towards their approaching exit. The lacquered wooden planks of the diner absorbed their sprint through the doors as the reverberations rattled the weathered dishes from their shelves. Through the continuous discord of shattering porcelain, Calvin vaunted over the service booth, his anchor digging into the soft metallic folds of his ribcage as he clashed against the concrete partition.

The world kept ringing as her balance spun in circles around her head like an orbiting planet. In the bewildering daze, she swayed to look at the path in which they just crossed, but couldn't bring her clouded vision to clear past the point of incomprehensible murkiness. The eager ringing in her ears brought with it a ferocious headache which crippled her ability to think and reason, but she knew for certain the gravity of the situation.

"I have a," she winched in pain, one tentative arm grasping the bruised flesh on her temple, "concussion."

"Girl, are you alright?" Calvin managed as he unrolled his crumbled form, grasping the lip of the table.

"Charlene." She hissed through her teeth with clamped eyes.

"Charlene," Calvin corrected pensively, "They are still following us, find someplace to hide."

Charlene growled in disgust over the nausea which plagued her body. Her frail attempt at standing up brought a wave to panic to Calvin, but as she supported herself with the oaken surface of the cupboards, he decided to raise his head above the countertop to see the progress of the chirping drones.

"Wake up, damnit." Charlene hissed, as she rasped her closed fist over her ribcage, attempting to jar the idle parasite into action.

The hallway was a tunnel of stone and brass, and as the drones came closer, the combination of their flickering siren lights became a freight train of staggering volume. Apprehensively tightening the hold on his anchor, Calvin readied a golfing stance, prepared to uppercut the first wave of drones approaching the table in single file.

"You can't hit them all with the anchor, Daddy." Charlene sighed, from the corner of the service desk, a soft golden illumination pulsing from her chest, past the collar bone and stopping as it highlighted the curvature of her skull. Calvin watched as the irritated flesh around her eyes and hairline began to pulse and return to perfect condition in mere moments.

"We don't have an alternative." Calvin bellowed, as he glared at the dispersing drones entering the room as hornets would from their hive. The buzzing was relentless as they became surrounded from all directions. With a swivel of their machine gun barrels, the clattering of live ammunition being reloaded into their cartridges became a precursor to death. But despite the threat to his livelihood and that to his daughter, Calvin's eye to detail became infatuated with something in the scene which didn't belong. In the symphony of reddened dwarf stars in the solar system, engrossing his perception with their vermillion tinge, was the most unremarkable shooting star of yellow. It was now the window in which Calvin looked to, past the reinforced glass and the plants which hugged the frame, past the cold waters which he called home, and onto the building on the other side of the trench. The flickering light bulb of a small apartment begged for his attention, and he couldn't tear himself away from it. Through the otherwise dark living space, Calvin saw a pair of pale legs cloaked by a lavender summer dress fluidly approach the guardrail to fascinating window. As the figure came closer, he could make out the contours of the blue silken sash around her stomach, floating with the astral breeze which seemed to surround her. Lowering an elbow on the wooden surface of the railing, her face dropped out of the veil of darkness and what he saw loosened his hold on the anchor.

"Yellow eyes." He rasped in disbelief.

Her radioactive yellow eyes stared at his window intently, before taking a look at him in particular. The slight movement of her head brought the gray ribbon tying her hair back to a gentle shake.

"Alter." The figure seemed to say, as Calvin read her lips.

With the sound of a car accident striking a fire hydrant, Calvin believed the torrent of bullets to be making their assault on Charlene. Diving over to the corner as a shield, his hunkered expression granted notice to the kitchen sink which was now spewing water several inches above its sundered tap. Meager water droplets began to float upwards as Calvin felt an ominous presence begin to invade the room. Awoken from a daze, the machines began to change the direction of their barrel back to the armored form. Calvin watched at the drones began to fall erratically, their propellers failing to keep themselves stabilized. With the piercing note of cracked whip, Calvin realized that the several droplets of water were acting as bullets as they penetrated the sound barrier and the metal casings of the mechanical hornets. Hole upon denting hole pelted the drones as the bullets that missed scattered against the far wall in a grim show of destruction and the sound of dripping water.

"What is happening?" Charlene screamed, as she covered her ears and hugged her legs close.

"Yellow eyes." Calvin abruptly answered, too shocked to describe the figure correctly.

While the drones were worse for wear, the reddened alarms they donned continued their aggressive siren. Grating the metal of their turret swivel, they tried to open fire on the two, but only succeeded in wasting ammunition against the wooden planks in a shower of splinters. The unnatural pressure persisted in the diner, as once again the sound of crushing metal drowned out the alarms. A tornado of air pressure sucked the remaining drones into a tempest which condensed their forms together in a central heap of scrap before crushing the jagged form into the floor in a feral display of strength.

The only sound in the otherwise silent diner was the relaxed nature of the meandering water from the sink. Daring to carry himself over the counter, Calvin could only stare at the powerful figure from beyond the trench whom was also staring at him. His mind raced at her assistance, as it donned to him that she was the one in which Charlene had described in such admiring detail.

"Look," he stumbled over his own words, at the hidden girl in the service booth. Charlene's apprehensive eyes slowly approached the window. At the sight of her, Charlene's heartbeat elated in happiness, but the expression in which the figure wore, was concerning.

"Rectify." She mouthed over the great ocean which separated them.

Calvin's eyes opened wide as he heard the water droplets from the sink halt in their trickling against the steel drainage pipe. Looking slowly behind himself, he drew Charlene in close, protecting her from behind the armor of his left leg.

"Charlene, you need to run."


	8. Chapter 8

Small orbs of water danced among the open air, imbued by the illumination of the faint neon boards from outside the window. With a summer dress in the depths of the ocean, hair casually tied behind her head, and the flawlessly unscarred skin of her shoulders and face, Calvin understood all too clearly what was in front of him wasn't regular in this formidable city. Charlene grasped the edge of the booth apprehensively, as her face called out for the figure's attention, she couldn't help but notice the distinct feeling that she was being ignored, a mere shrimp looking up to the unquantifiable mass of a leviathan.

With the sound of rushing water, Calvin's perplexed daze broke away from the girl before turning abruptly. The water droplets began to grow larger, as they sucked the stagnant air into their cores, and became tangerine sized bubbles. With fear growing rapidly, Calvin's boots froze to the ground, swearing internally at his terror, he heard the first of the bubbles scrape over his armor.

Following the path of the bubbles, Charlene's scratched her head in bewilderment. The water seemed to poke and prod at the Calvin, using the air inside as a cushion to bounce off of the lumbering behemoth before returning again with more force. As the water flattened and approached the elbows of Calvin, she observed the small droplets begin to lift his arms upward before dropping them at his sides again, as if playing with the elasticity of a ragdoll. Peering inquisitively at the yellow eyes from beyond the curtain of water, Charlene experienced a revelation.

"She isn't blinking." She marveled eerily, "She is throwing bubbles against the folds of your armor to test the functionality of your reflexes underneath your suit."

Turning her head to see firsthand, Charlene's spine tingled as she examined how the joints of his armor lifted and fell without any resistance behind their gravity. Her eyes looked to the jagged protruding holes from the bulwark of his chest armor, only to notice that they had been glazed over in crude iron. Turning once more to the window, Charlene yelped in panic as the figure's eyes seemed to suddenly be fixed on hers. The figure's unwavering gaze was perched in question. The question in which she was asking Charlene was lost in translation, and she couldn't help but assume that it was related to the protector at her side.

"She seems to be mouthing five words, Charlene." Calvin informed.

"Yes, all five words have only one syllable." Charlene muttered analytically.

"How did-"Calvin carefully sounded out, by the movement of her lips.

"How did you do it?" Charlene finished.

The figure began repeating the phrase, the repetition marking her face with aggravation and malice. Her grip on the hand rail crunched the wooden beam below her fingers as flesh around her eyes darkened, bringing the feral yellow glowing out in contrast. Calvin's hold on his body returned once he recognized the considerable threat to Charlene. With the sound of squealing lumber, Calvin's boot impacted the floor in kneeling stance as he swept his free arm in order to carry the girl at his side. Eyeing the entrance tunnel to the garden, he took one last look at the fuming figure which was screaming at him the same five words.

"How did you do it!?" she spat as she brought her index finger in a point of accusation, "Tell me how you did it!"

The bubbles began to shake with volatile energy as Calvin lumbered over the floorboards in attempt to escape the fearsome creature. Evading the torrential downpour of raindrops with a shielded tumble, he sprinted past the open hallway resolute in his goal not to look back.

"How did I do what?" Charlene sobbed inconsolably under Calvin's arm.

"We need to avoid her, she is too dangerous, Charlene." Calvin rasped, as he continued his stride.

"She has never been like that before though. I don't understand what would cause that kind of reaction in her." She groaned over the constant motion of Calvin's running.

"We're going to the machine you were talking about," Calvin boldly ushered. "And you are going to teach me how to use the abilities that she does."

"Are you crazy?" Charlene hissed, "You need ADAM to expand your DNA before you try to alter something!"

"I will cross that problem when we come to it."

As they quietly walked into the garden district, Calvin watched the soft billow of smoke continue to arise from the ceiling camera. The area around them seemed vacant, as the opened doors to the supply shed remained ajar, only to exhibit empty shelves from inside. Looking to Charlene for direction, Calvin's head followed her indicating arm as it pointed to the white paint of the firmly build staircase, and the terrace in which the flight of stairs led up to. Following the curve of the steps, Calvin turned to see the heightened view of the indoor garden, as the grass seemed to cover the insignificant hills, the planter bed demanded to be the center of attention. Rows in the center of the room housed nothing but the dried persistence of weeds, instead of the promise of beauty considering its position.

"How can anything live down here without the sun's light?" Calvin softly whispered.

"That was one of the greatest problems with this city," Charlene pondered with a shrug, "The early days were most memorable by the psychologists and shrinks. Row after row of people would line up under the paranoia and depression of not seeing the suns light for such a long time. Some people ended up going insane and maniacal by that alone, while the others used ADAM to cover up their stresses and ended up with the same fate."

"The plants though, they rely on the sun." Calvin rephrased.

"That is a mystery," Charlene admitted, "The scientists got plants to live down here, trees and bushes in Arcadia, but this here, is common grass. Some jokingly claimed the ordinary plant life to exist off of the suffering emotions of the citizens, and I am personally not one to disagree."

Reaching the top of the staircase, Calvin observed the aluminum statues of little sisters which held the vending machine upright. They both wore red dresses under sky blue tops, while their oversized heads held superficial smiles pointed eerily in the distance. The machine itself was branded with white text upon a red case by the name Gatherer's Garden. Display windows running vertically housed glass urns full of bubbling red syrup, halted by a metallic cap.

"I thought that I would have grown taller by now," Charlene bitterly scowled at the vending depository, two feet above her head. "Let's see here, winter blast, electro bolt, and- Incinerate."

With a swift jump upwards, her open palm slapped against the plastic vial casing, bringing with it, the tone of a clicking cash register. Calvin observed the urn being shuffled by the gears before being loaded onto a conveyer belt. Dropping harshly against the vending depository's floor, he stifled a chuckle as the container was slightly out of Charlene's reach.

Growling with balled fists, she turned her head to Calvin upon hearing his teasing laughter. She brought up her right hand to point accusingly.

"Keep laughing and I won't get you anything, Mister." She harshly swiped.

"Fine, fine." Calvin pensively apologized, "buy me something useful."

With another two jumps in short sequence, Charlene slapped the plastic casings of four jars.

"Muscle tonic, Skin density, Sonic boom, and Cyclone trap." Charlene announced thoughtfully. "The first two are self-explanatory, while Sonic boom uses gusts of air pressure to repel anything around you. Cyclone trap is a portable version, where you can put a sprout of air pressure on a surface, and anything that touches it will be thrown away from it."

With the clatter of four more jars striking the glass container of the first on the depository, Charlene eagerly pointed to their rosy sheen, commanding Calvin to retrieve them for her.

"They are the only plasmids which require a substantially small amount of ADAM to use. If you are able, this is where you can start." Charlene explained.

A faint noise of an opening door made them freeze in their tracks and scan the area around them. In the absolute silence which hid the culprit, Calvin's senses became infatuated with the hum of the neon lighted vending machine. As Charlene peered into the faceplate of Calvin, she came to the understanding that he too had heard it, only adding to the fear of what the cause was.

"Sometimes ghosts wander this city, I guess." Charlene nervously beckoned for the jars wrapped against Calvin's forearm.

"Ghosts usually don't bother turning door handles." Calvin thoughtfully replied, as he held the urn of chili-red properties near Charlene's open hands.

As the bottom of the container came in contact with Charlene's skin, Calvin grew befuddled by the concentration of red light which enveloped the room. Shrouded in a concealment of darkness, save for the reddened spotlight of her helmet window, stood the culprit, imposing her identity to the room commandingly. As Calvin's eyes fell upon her, his own reddened gaze began to grant shape to the metal exoskeleton ribcage with huffed with anger at the scene. Understanding that the sight of a large male hoarding crystal vials of physically and mentally altering drugs in his arms, while simultaneously offering one of said vials to a small carefree child would bring question to ethics and morality, Calvin pondered the correct way to amend her preconceived notion.

"Well I got nothing." Calvin sighed amiably, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Dropping the urn into the hands of Charlene, Calvin did what he believed to be the most natural conversation starter between the will of this mysterious figure and himself in the past. Bringing his free hand upwards, he extended his middle finger while waving the hand in silent greeting.

In a mere second, the rebar rod which was housed in Melody's belt flickered into her closed fist. A high piercing howl filled the room as she breathed out, vibrating the brightness of the vending machine's lights before dying down again.

"You don't make many friends, do you Daddy." Charlene forfeited with a sigh.

"Girl, I am the depths," Calvin reiterated, "The depths need not make friends."


	9. Chapter 9

Calvin saw the figure approaching close. Too close into his area of defense with a yielded blade of rebar. With a viper like lunge, Calvin lost his footing. Leaning back and catching himself with an offset hand he connected a backwards kick with Melody's stomach. With the crackling of a damaged speaker, Melody grasped the armor of her abdomen tenderly. Brandishing the pointed weapon she approached from the side. Swipe swipe— the blade deflected harmlessly off of the armor of Calvin's shoulder. Swoom the arched crescent of the anchor head trailed horizontally. The air left her lungs as she was pinched between the base and the beak of the anchor. Head sagging against the continuing force behind the swing, she dropped her weight into the balls of her feet and pushed off from the weapon. Unable to withdraw the anchor in time, Calvin watched as Melody twirled on her heels bringing the rebar rod into a honed lunge against his neck line. An aluminum can being pierced by a thumbtack, the only image Charlene could manifest in her mind- made real by the scene unfolding beyond her. The blade continued through the throat of Calvin before being embedded up to the beholder's fist. The entry wound began to spew blackened sludge raining down on Melody's armor.

"Shit!" Charlene screamed in panic, dropping the emptied urn abruptly to the floor. "Stop it!"

Melody's head swung to the noise just as the plume of reddened fire raced past her chest, roasting her leather carapace. The child's hands were bathed in dripping magma, like saliva from a feral dog. Her eyes opened wide as the yellow glare from the child flittered amongst the orange and red flames. With clenched teeth, Charlene raised her fists level to Melody's head. Faint hissing filled the room as the golden glow of her parasite continuously reconstructed the scorched flesh past her wrists.

"If he dies, you won't live to see his lifeless shell hit the floor." Charlene spelled out, as the reddened magma shed exterior layers, showing the glow of white metal underneath. "Get away from him."

The grasping of a hand on her own shook Melody from the fearful girl, as she looked forward to see Calvin's hand squeezing the rebar into her closed fist.

"If you had your way, and I was dead." Calvin's astral voice projected through the vibrations of the blade, "What would you try to do with Charlene?"

'I would protect her!' Melody motioned with an open hand, flat against her chest. Her voice screeching in disharmony at the gesture.

"You," Calvin tittered dismissively, "You hope to stand up to the Leviathan's fangs, shielding Charlene from the backlash of her desired suitor?"

Melody examined the blackened sludge protruding from his seemingly mortal wound. Red ichor seemed to be unveiled by the abandoning oil coating as more and more of the black became replaced with the flow of red. Calvin inhaled raggedly, his fingers arching in half way fists as he vaulted backwards, as if in sudden pain, tearing the sword from his throat.

"Something's wrong- Run and hide." Calvin gurgled from beneath the liquid, waving dismissively at Charlene. Calvin fought against pulsing pressure from inside of his chest, the agony that ensued blistered his flesh and torched his mind. Thu-Thump- thump – thump – thump. The foreign sound grated against his senses as he looked towards the apprehensive Melody several feet from where he was standing. He fought against the unnatural convulsions of his chest cavity as he reeled the anchor in by the fiber rope.

'_It is my heartbeat, and my lungs_.' Calvin screamed internally, '_they are working now, but when was it that they had originally stopped?'_

Swaying gently in her stance, Charlene fell to the floor abruptly. The magma of her hands quickly fizzling out against the cold ground before being abandoned by the golden glow. Calvin watched the unconscious form begin to repair itself while asleep.

Eyeing the colorful urns near Melody's feet, Calvin prepared a dash.

'And what is it you plan to do with her?' Melody gestured angrily with a piercing index finger.

"I question it myself," Calvin paced carefully around Melody, "The girl has dreams, dreams that are impossible to accomplish alone. Robbed of her by the death of her protector, trampled upon her by the circumstances of this damnable city. She wants to marry the Leviathan, and you are not strong enough to help her do so. Therefore you shouldn't stand in the way of somebody who can!"

Calvin savagely heaved the anchor towards Melody. The patter of her tumble preceded the quaking smash as the anchor embedded itself in the floor tiles. A blur of patterned steel approached his eyes from the left. The lunge behind it skidding off of Calvin's chest as he rotated his torso slightly.

She watched as the lumbering figure sped forward unnaturally by ripping at the anchor rope with his tightened hand. He was now at his anchor's position, in his hand he housed the rose laden urn.

"Legend has it that Leviathan, commands the seas, Isis is a flying creature whose wingspan can block out the sun, and Behemoth is a towering figure that bleeds iron." Calvin claimed as he smashed the urn against his punctured armor. "I know where two of the creatures reside at this moment in time, unless you are hiding a pair of wings from me, you have no hope of victory."


	10. Chapter 10

Water lapped against the wooden pillars which elevated the thick and warped harbor. Although the stains of salt and sea life rose above the tide of water, the small shacks on the platforms seemed teeming with life. The gentle illumination of warm fire overflowed through the sunset streaked windows as the constant blaze of the hearths within the homes cooked blissfully meals of ranging variety. Calvin watched his parents by the cooking pot, his father hugging a drum of sea-salt lovingly, sneakily pouring in a cascade of grainy dust when his wife's attention was preoccupied by watching the rising tides from outside the kitchen window.

"Will you stop that," she playfully snapped, tearing the palm woven drum from her husband's arms before swiveling and dropping it to the floor with a thud.

"Fine." Calvin's father smoothly reassured.

"Calvin," She pensively uttered, turning away from her husband, whom saw the opportunity to grasp the drum and resume his ritualistic behavior.

"Yea?" Calvin answered, lifting his head from the faint blue etchings of an oceanic map.

"I saw your eyes light up when you saw the recruitment board in the trade district today." She pointed out carefully, "The Institute of War is only trying to recruit explorers from our city. I'm not sure what you might be expecting from them, but to be an explorer out there, you can't be afraid of the ocean."

"The boating accident was two years ago, when I was sixteen, mom." Calvin admonished, "I'm not afraid of the ocean, I'm afraid of carefree people who are on the deck of the boat, but don't the difference between a coral reef and a dock."

"Take their mistakes with a pinch of salt, Calvin" his father smirked cunningly, "Choosing to be mad at someone is simply punishing yourself for the stupidity of others. You will find that everyone from Ionia to Demacia simply want to keep alive and keep happy. If you recognize these instinctual things in a person, you can predict what they will do in any situation."

"You say that," Calvin quipped, "But what about Noxus, right between Ionia and Demacia- was the suffering that they chose to spread benefiting their own happiness in the slightest?"

"Happiness, my boy, is existing." He pondered to the far wall of the kitchen, examining the lofting smoke of the cooking pot, "existing means that you belong, and as long as a person can stand still for a moment and not be washed away by the torrential downpour of life, then he is happy."

"Why do you even want to be an explorer anyway?" Calvin's mother growled, "We have a wonderful life right here in Bilgewater."

"It's just—just" Calvin formulated with his mouth before his mind caught up, "Sometimes I imagine this deity with a stopwatch, as we started cultivating this land, exploring the caverns and hiking to the top of the mountains- the second hand just keeps rotating. The deity's face is stern, the eyes drifting down to the number before rising back up to our world, like the sun and moon daily."

"And what do you think the deity is measuring with her timepiece, Calvin?" His father gestured for him to continue.

"She keeps looking for us to pass the finish line, I can't explain why- but set in the impeccably neutral expression of the face, her eyes betray a hopefulness that we will find the goal. That our paradigm will discover a philosophy, that our feet will set rest upon an undiscovered land which was made for us to discover."

"And you think becoming an explorer for the Institute of War will help you find this secret land, Calvin?" His mother dismissed, "Leave that way of thinking to the Ionians, with all the time they spend meditating and letting life slip away they would have found this priori. What you need to do is keep the land beneath your feet and your eyes only set upon the security of life. If you step out too far from your ignorance, you are never going to be able to go back to blissfulness."

"That is what we all fear," Calvin confirmed, "That we will get to a point where stupidity is valued over intelligence, and comfort over freedom. I don't trust the Ionians with something this important. I don't trust the living and breathing life forms in this land to discover a reason for existence that isn't shrouded by greed and self-gain by the finder. I can only trust myself, and with the metacognition of myself as a human, can only trust my own actions instead of the actions of others."

"Is this goodbye then?" Calvin's mother stirred the cooking pot slowly.

"I'm afraid it is." Calvin answered boldly, grasping the faint blue etchings with his closed fist, "I've already been recruited. My first task was to graph the island before I would be admitted to one of the discovery ships. Take a look."

Calvin's mother held the outstretched map before her, studying the contours of the three segmented island in which she called home. The precise lines chamfered the sides of the island in the third dimension as she marveled at the humongous anchor which seemed to be embedded in the location of their house. Tears blurred her vision as she realized the significance of the icon, tracing the rope of the anchor as it points to the unchartered territories beyond familiarity.

"I'll always come back," Calvin reassured, "This house is my anchor in the world."

"Alright Calvin." His father's characteristic smirk dropped ever so slightly, "If you are ever under a-salt remember this, you have to learn to trust again. Solidarity is a spice, not like salt I would say, but sugar. Too much of it can rot the mind and make one feeble."

"But reliance on others is a liability that creates more surface area for a rogue knife." Calvin deadpanned.

The clatter of wooden bowls on the table stamped out the exchanging of words. With a ladle half the size of the cooking pot, Calvin's mother poured the gumbo over the rice filled bowls, sniffling slightly at the bombardment of the pleasant smelling food. As they sat at the table softly, not a word was spoken until Calvin's mother grasped her fork and took a bite from the meal. Her eyes honed into a sinister glare as her jaw moved slowly to the side.

"I hate salt." She whined pitifully while sinking over the tabletop, "The food is too salty."

"Yeah, yes it is." Calvin's father accepted, as tears traced down his face and dropped rhythmically into the gumbo he ate.


End file.
